I've been working as the Social Media Editor and a staff writer at Forbes since October 2011. Prior to that, I worked as a freelance writer and contributor here. On this blog, I focus on futurism, cutting edge technology, and breaking research. Follow me on Twitter - @thealexknapp. You can email me at aknapp@forbes.com

Why Marco Rubio Needs To Know That The Earth Is Billions Of Years Old

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who many political observers think has a strong shot to be a 2016 Presidential candidate, just finished a lengthy interview with GQ that you can read here. One thing that struck my interest here, as someone who often reports on science, was Rubio’s answer when he was asked the question, “How old do you think the Earth is.”

In response, Rubio told GQ that, “I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.”

The emphasis in Rubio’s statement is mine. I say that because the age of the universe has a lot to do with how our economy is going to grow. That’s because large parts of the economy absolutely depend on scientists being right about either the age of the Universe or the laws of the Universe that allow scientists to determine its age. For example, astronomers recently discovered a galaxy that is over 13 billion light years away from Earth. That is, at its distance, it took the light from the Galaxy over 13 billion years to reach us.

Now, Marco Rubio’s Republican colleague Representative Paul Broun, who sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology, recently stated that it was his belief that the Universe is only 9,000 years old. Well, if Broun is right and physicists are wrong, then we have a real problem. Virtually all modern technology relies on optics in some way, shape or form. And in the science of optics, the fact that the speed of light is constant in a vacuum is taken for granted. But the speed of light must not be constant if the universe is only 9,000 years old. It must be capable of being much, much faster. That means that the fundamental physics underlying the Internet, DVDs, laser surgery, and many many more critical parts of the economy are based on bad science. The consequences of that could be drastic, given our dependence on optics for our economic growth.

Here’s an even more disturbing thought – scientists currently believe that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old because radioactive substances decay at generally stable rates. Accordingly, by observing how much of a radioactive substance has decayed, scientists are able to determine how old that substance is. However, if the Earth is only 9,000 years old, then radioactive decay rates are unstable and subject to rapid acceleration under completely unknown circumstances. This poses an enormous danger to the country’s nuclear power plants, which could undergo an unanticipated meltdown at any time due to currently unpredictable circumstances. Likewise, accelerated decay could lead to the detonation of our nuclear weapons, and cause injuries and death to people undergoing radioactive treatments in hospitals. Any of these circumstances would obviously have a large economic impact.

If the Earth is really 9,000 years old, as Paul Broun believes and Rubio is willing to remain ignorant about, it becomes imperative to shut down our nuclear plants and dismantle our nuclear stockpiles now until such time as scientists are able to ascertain what circumstances exist that could cause deadly acceleration of radioactive decay and determine how to prevent it from happening.

The bottom line is that this economy, at its root, is built on a web of scientific knowledge from physics to chemistry to biology. It’s impossible to just cherry pick out parts we don’t like. If the Earth is 9,000 years old, then virtually the entire construct of modern science is simply wrong. Not only that, most of the technology that we rely on most likely wouldn’t work – as they’re dependent on science that operates on the same physical laws that demonstrate the age of the universe.

Now, this doesn’t mean that our representatives to the Congress and to the Senate should be scientific experts. But if they hold ideas about the world around us that are fundamentally at odds with scientific evidence, then that will ultimately infringe on their ability to make reasoned judgments about a host of issues where the economy touches technology. And that could end up harming the economy as a whole.

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Look, as an atheist, I agree with you that Creationism is an embarrassing eyesore in our modern 21st century world. But as an economic conservative, I have to agree with Rubio that a man who believes the world was created in 7 days isn’t anywhere near as ignorant and harmful as a man who believes in the dangerous myths of socialism and its close cousin, Keynesianism. The actual age of the universe is merely academic, but economics affects our everyday lives, and so peddling crazy unworkable economic mythology like a Ponzi scheme is a recipe for imminent disaster. It’s a Clear and Present Danger.

Maybe you need to consider a more relevant analogy – the ultimate end of the universe. Physicists speculate about the “Heat Death of the Universe” – a situation where the universe degenerates into a monotone haze of uniform temperature. No temperature differentials, or energy differentials, or gradients are able to exist in that situation. The universe goes out in a fog of conformity.

Now think about the possible “Heat Death of the US Economy” – a future where anybody with extra money, extra capital, above-average income is jeered at and taxed into surrendering it. No differentials in income allowed, no economic gradients are allowed, as per socialist dogma. If you look at the ample precedents from 20th-century history, or at how the Occupy nutcases and their Democrat instigators are behaving today, then this scenario doesn’t seem so terribly far-fetched. I’d worry more about that if I were you, rather than comforting yourself into complacency by saying “it can’t happen here.”

For someone who tries so hard to sound informed, you fall into the classic Fox News trap of mistaking socialism for communism, thus making your whole point irrelevant. Congratulations.

“No differentials in income allowed” is NOT part of any socialist doctrine – it’s pure communism. Seriously, if you really see yourself as an “economic conservative”, you should at least know the most basic differences between socialism and communism. Otherwise it just sounds ridiculous when you call other people out for being “ignorant and harmful”.

Hey genius, in case you haven’t noticed, the Occupy nuts and their Democrat allies are indeed arrogating to themselves unlimited license to sneer and jeer at anyone whom they arbitrarily label as “Da Rich”. These fools are driven by hormonalism and not by any rationality. So in that regard, your petty distinctions between who is a communist and who is a socialist amount to hair-splitting. All those extremists see is that someone has some money, and that money must be raided to get redistributed to anyone who calls themself “needy”.

Pure communist ideologues have always maintained that socialism is the necessary stepping stone to communism anyway.

Hey genius, as soon as you went into the “Fox News trap” diatribe, you pretty much shredded your credibility. Go back to your Occupy squatter hangout, and keep pretending how you the self-appointed “99 Percent” are righteous and true.

Mr. Knapp, your piece is on the money, but I don’t think you picked the best examples; nor do you give enough credit to ignorance.

First, the scientific problems with a 9,000 year old earth can be seen much more tangibly than a ‘change’ in the speed of light. 9,000 years violates causality (nuclear dating unequivocally says billions of years). A violation of causality has never been observed; the paradoxes created thereby are so absurd they have long been a favorite topic of science fiction.

Ignorance is not necessarily a liability in politics – it can be an asset in appealing to an uneducated electorate. That is much more true for economics (the Democratic left) than it is for creationism (the Christian right) – and much more damaging. Or, an example from international affairs: Reagan successfully bluffed the Soviets with the threat of a satellite based ‘Star Wars’ defense against ICBM’s. The Soviet leaders were insufficiently sophisticated to know it was impossible. Reagan was probably just as misguided, but that is irrelevant – the Soviets believed we held the aces.

The real danger in ignorance, especially in science and economics, is the empowerment of demagoguery. Leaders can gain power through demonstrable lies that the public believes for emotional reasons – lies that would be impotent if used on educated voters. The resulting allocations of public resources and directives for policy can then, in a rational analysis, be very wasteful and destructive.

Global warming is virtually a perfect example of such an issue and response. The public is very poorly educated in science, giving promoters the opportunity to stoke emotion from a common ‘green’ cultural belief that humans are a plague on the planet. The result is legion – a huge worldwide industry and power-hungry political movement growing around CO2 mitigation. Meanwhile the best technology ever developed for electricity generation languishes (new school nukes) – even though it produces no carbon.

Political truth, the source of power, is what people believe – whether from emotion or logic. Logic in human affairs is dwarfed by emotion, the more so among the uneducated. Politicians know this as they know their own names.

I grant you that Representatives should know more about a lot of things, not just science. How about basic budgeting, economics, laws of human performance with respect to incentives, etc. The link between a Congressman and the age of the earth seems a bit silly. Should Harry Reid be able to articulate how the Tunneling Effect of electrons work in order to be a “good” Senator? I doubt he knows what an electron is.

What about certain scientific phenomena that scientists themselves disagree on? Yes, the earth is warming, is it primarily man caused? I had this discussion with my father, a chemistry PhD. His view is similar to 20,000 other scientists who say the warming of the earth is cyclical. What should Rubio’s position be on that?

I agree with you that general, broad knowledge for Congress matters. However, just as my father cannot plot the Laffer curve, I would not expect my Congressman to know everything about science. I think the key is to recognize that different viewpoints need to be at the table and that Congress does need to make decisions.

Alex, I noticed you called Rubio out specifically. I did not look it up yet, but presumably there are others on the Subcommittee. Do they have the in depth knowledge of science to which you refer or is there another reason you are specifically targeting Rubio?

The reason I ask is that most of the Forbes Staff authors have a specific bias (left or right), but they don’t necessarily highlight it in their articles in order to seem unbiased. Just curious.